I don't like slide film for scanning

[Tin Can]

Good to know and why not emulate, lighting, film, exposure, hangers et al. Of course we may need to use different lights, film, and...?

The point is standardize.

The faces will change.

any portrait / professional photographer nails the exposure, that is what they are paid to do LOL
it was a formula in knowing exactly what his negative was going to look like before he took the photograph.
he studied lighing ( as part of his formal training ) with john garo . ..
who was THE master if there ever was one. its sad how john garo's name has gone down as an obscure footnote
in the world of early 20th photograph trivia .. anyways
EVERYTHING was the same, the lights are always set up a certain way a certain distance, the camera a certain distance, always the same fstop and shutter
and the film always processed exactly the same way in the same replenished developer in hangers agitated 6 ( or whatever ) hangers at a time
using the same agitation technique...
... a school kid 12 years old could have processed his film for him after being shown how to do it ... there really is no mystique about how he "nailed the exposure"

[jnantz]

Good to know and why not emulate, lighting, film, exposure, hangers et al. Of course we may need to use different lights, film, and...?

The point is standardize.

The faces will change.

YES !

but it helps to know your stuff
btw i am still trying to train my organ grinder monkey sign language and typing
next is processing my film !
OP
i have never had trouble scanning slides ( either black / white or color ). i'm not a wizard
or any sort of photoshop or scanning expert but still ive never had trouble with my 13 year old scanner
( or my 1200 UMAX before that ) scanning my film to look at least as good as the slide.
while drum and imacon scans and every other kind of high end scan is great, and those people know their stuff
i've never really seen the necessity of doing that sort of thing. your problem might be that you expect your scanning client
( vuescan? in this case ) to interpret your film for you. scanning a file is like printing it, sometimes you have stuff that is lost in translation
and you have to interpret and figure out how you are going to use your raw materials. regarding color cast .. you can probably go into
one of the drop down menus in PS and adjust it that way. its like shooting ektachrome without a filter. its kind of blue
and if you want things to look nice and the way you might have seen it, you have to filter either ahead of time infront ( or behind ) the lens
or tweek here and twerk there in PS ... photography is all about interpretation because even what we see isnt' really reality. you have to make it real.
you know its like the spoon not really being there, and once you realize its just in your mind you can bend it sort of thing...
YMMV

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I don't really expect Vuewscan or Silverfast to provide me a perfectly scanned negative. In fact, I prefer to do that in PS after obtaining a raw scan file (no correction at all) I just find slide film very unforgiving and difficult to get right in a computer (do justice to the actual slide)

I am sure I will get better at taking slide images and developing them which will then make scanning a snap.

[Tin Can]

Many of us shot color 35mm slide film for decades and projected it. Slide shows were big.

I have no idea how they almost all came out well exposed as I used Sunny 16 as described inside the film box.

No light meter and seldom used the expensive flash bulbs. So mostly outdoors.

I still have those slides, definetly not art, but good as documentation of life.

I scanned the 'good ones' 20 years ago with a $1000 Nikon slide scanner. Not good enough...

[jnantz]

I scanned the 'good ones' 20 years ago with a $1000 Nikon slide scanner. Not good enough...

yeah i think there is a difference between a sweet bright projector bulb and the not so bright scanner lid..
i over expose all my slides so they are thin enough to scan
or i under expose them so they are dense enough that i print them with a 300W bulb
my bar is set very low so i am not disappointed.. i have realized that is the trick noone wants
anyone to know about .. setting the bar very low ( and listening to some bobby mcfarren from time to time )

[Steven Ruttenberg]

yeah i think there is a difference between a sweet bright projector bulb and the not so bright scanner lid..
i over expose all my slides so they are thin enough to scan
or i under expose them so they are dense enough that i print them with a 300W bulb
my bar is set very low so i am not disappointed.. i have realized that is the trick noone wants
anyone to know about .. setting the bar very low ( and listening to some bobby mcfarren from time to time )

I prefer Metallica

[jnantz]

I prefer Metallica

i don't think metalilica ever sang "don't worry be happy"

and according to his dudeness they were a....

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Yep, all the way, But One is a classic and so is For Whom the Bell Tolls!

[mrladewig]

I scan with an Epson 4990 Photo, the very old predecessor to your scanner, which also claimed a 4.0Dmax or so. That is straight up wishful thinking, but I feel like the scanner does fine. I would recommend the EpsonScan software as well in the professional mode. Typically you'll need to adjust for shadow color casts through a curve and if possible, I would get it as close as possible to looking correct in the scanner software. A straight RGB adjustment cannot address the types of issues that show up. As I recall, Provia develops a blue green shift in the shadows. One way to think of the adjustments is that you have a pairing on these 3 axis.

Red - Cyan
Green - Magenta
Blue - Yellow

If you are seeing a cyan shift, counter it by pulling red up on the curve in the affected tones. You may have to peg the curve to keep highlights from being negatively impacted.

If blue-green, you may need to make a small adjust to increase red and decrease blue in the affected tones.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

For casts, that is correct. I do that in PS with the color balance tool. Works great and lets me really target shadows, mids, highlights and anything in between if I use luminosity masks to boot. I do typically get a bluish type cast on my slides, and can even see it when viewing on a light table.

I tried Epson scan and not a fan of it. I prefer Vuescan, although, Silverfast is okay now that I have figured it out somewhat. But I typically just scan raw files (gamma = 1 and no color profile) and then convert and such inside of PS.